5G "awakens" the Internet of Vehicles technology. What kind of new era will autonomous driving usher in?

The Internet of Vehicles has injected fresh blood into the century-old traditional automobile industry, and the industry has also ushered in an important development opportunity. Cars are no longer cold instruments, but "smart spaces" that can collaborate with cars, infrastructure, people and the cloud.

Recently, the issuance of 5G licenses marks the official entry of China into the first year of 5G commercialization. As one of the largest application scenarios of 5G, the Internet of Vehicles has released a trillion-dollar market, and the Internet of Vehicles has become the commanding height of technological innovation and industrial development for domestic and foreign companies.

At the end of 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology formulated the "Action Plan for the Development of the Internet of Vehicles (Intelligent Connected Vehicles) Industry" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"). The Plan set the goal of achieving breakthroughs in the cross-industry integration of the Internet of Vehicles (Intelligent Connected Vehicles) industry by 2020, achieving large-scale application of intelligent connected vehicles with high-level autonomous driving functions in specific scenarios, and achieving a high degree of coordination between "people-vehicle-road-cloud".

5G "awakens" the Internet of Vehicles from three aspects

The high reliability and low latency characteristics of 5G networks will fill the technical gap in the communication network layer of vehicle networking and autonomous driving.

When cars were first invented, engines dominated the development of the automotive industry. Now, in the new era of information technology where everything is connected, 5G will redefine future smart cars in terms of smart on-board electronic systems, smart interactive applications, etc. The Internet of Vehicles, which serves as the basis for vehicle networking, has also ushered in a new turning point in development.

What will 5G bring to the Internet of Vehicles? As Professor Tian Daxin of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics said: 5G will "awaken" the Internet of Vehicles from three aspects:

1) V2X communication has evolved from “points and lines” to “surfaces”

The previous Internet of Vehicles was often limited to test sites or a small number of vehicles due to the penetration rate of vehicle-mounted communication terminals. After the popularization of 5G, the data transmission rate and quality will be greatly improved. Vehicles only need to install low-cost signal receivers to complete V2X communication, which will greatly increase the penetration rate of vehicle networks.

2) Promote the collaborative computing mode of "smart car + smart road"

5G technology improves the efficiency of data transmission. In the future, vehicles can transmit the data that needs to be processed by the vehicle to the roadside edge server through the 5G network, thereby improving data processing efficiency and reducing vehicle energy consumption.

3) Accelerate the implementation of vehicle cloud management and control systems

While 5G technology improves the efficiency of information transmission within the Internet of Vehicles, it also improves the security of information transmission to a certain extent. Based on this feature, government departments can use 5G technology to manage and control connected vehicles through the cloud, and remotely realize group intelligence of connected vehicles.

As the fifth-generation communication network, 5G's transmission speed is hundreds of times faster than that of 4G, with a peak theoretical transmission speed of about 1GB per second. Unlike 4G which focuses on communication between people, in addition to interactions between people, 5G opens up the interactive ecology between people and things, and between things.

Wu Dongsheng, chief solution architect and general manager of strategic brand of Gosuncn, said that most of the components of future cars will have precise perception functions, so that the interaction of the entire car data, whether internal or external, will generate 1GB of data per second, so cars have higher requirements for communication networks. "Communication between cars and the outside world requires the support of 5G networks." Wu Dongsheng further said that at the decision-making level, 5G plays a key role in edge computing on the vehicle side, as well as the original cloud computing and cloud control technologies. At the control level, a key point of autonomous driving is remote control of the vehicle. The high reliability and low latency of 5G networks can support remote control of vehicles.

How OEMs and operators interpret vehicle-road collaboration

The Internet of Vehicles industry is a new type of industry that deeply integrates the automotive, electronics, information and communications, road transportation and other industries. The most important thing is to achieve a high degree of coordination between "people-vehicle-road-cloud". Currently, Internet and ICT giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Huawei have entered the market, trying to seize the market with solutions related to vehicle-road coordination.

In this automotive industry revolution, how should OEMs and operators interpret vehicle-road collaboration? Vehicle-road collaboration uses advanced wireless communications, integrates new-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing, and implements dynamic real-time information interaction between vehicles and between vehicles and roads in all directions.

Tian Daxin said that in vehicle-road collaboration, operators are the providers of communication platforms, providing a high-coverage and high-efficiency communication platform for vehicle-road collaboration. The OEMs are data service providers, providing the service system software and hardware for intelligent connected vehicles, determining the vehicle's connection mode and the collection, processing and display mode of connected data.

In Wu Dongsheng's view, operators should take on the construction and operation of the roadside system of the Internet of Vehicles, including providing corresponding traffic packages, traffic management for governments and enterprises, and other business applications. For OEMs, they should actively explore how vehicles can be better integrated into smart transportation, support smart transportation, and ultimately realize unmanned driving.

In short, OEMs are gradually extending to the vehicle-road system, while operators are deploying roadside equipment (RSU) and base stations to provide information services for vehicles and extend to the entire vehicle-road collaboration.

At the beginning of the release of the trillion-dollar market of the Internet of Vehicles, domestic OEMs and operators will face huge challenges. For 5G operators, the Internet of Vehicles has brought a large number of communication users, but also brought challenges. How to meet the high requirements of the Internet of Vehicles for 5G signal coverage and transmission quality is the biggest challenge for the current application of 5G in vehicle networks. Similarly, OEMs should study the structure of vehicles, the design of connected car intelligent systems, the upload mode of vehicle data, and the coordination between vehicles and between vehicles and roads in the Internet of Vehicles environment.

Who will lead the way in "smart travel" in 5G Internet of Vehicles?

Currently, 5G has led the Internet of Vehicles into a golden period of development. Innovation based on the service level is developing rapidly, and the 5G+Internet of Vehicles model has brought unlimited imagination space to the traditional communications and automotive industries.

Faced with the trillion-yuan economic scale of the Internet of Vehicles industry, how should the key players in the industry chain share this "big cake" of Internet of Vehicles? How can 5G Internet of Vehicles achieve cross-border collaboration? What is the impact of 5G on autonomous driving? How will 5G Internet of Vehicles technology innovate next?

During MWC2019, Gosuncn, a provider of intelligent connected vehicle services, will release its 5G Internet of Vehicles strategy and Gosuncn's city-level commercial Internet of Vehicles solution, as well as a 5G police patrol robot. Gosuncn Group will elaborate on Gosuncn's thinking and value to the industry from four aspects: technology planning, solutions, application practices, and business ecology.

Based on decades of accumulation of cellular communication technology and close cooperation with upstream and downstream of the Internet of Vehicles industry chain, Gosuncn has become the only Internet of Vehicles enterprise in China that has business links with car factories, intelligent transportation, 5G communications, electronic license plates, and artificial intelligence, and has deep technical and market accumulation in the four major areas of vehicle-mounted units, vehicle-road collaboration, Internet of Vehicles platform, and smart transportation applications. In addition to its experience in supporting millions of automotive-grade modules, Gosuncn also has a complete supporting system of R&D, quality, testing, and delivery that meets the requirements of pre-installation.

At the same time, taking 5G and V2X technology as an opportunity, Gosuncn is developing and providing a diversified and evolving fleet of connected car terminal products. It is reported that Gosuncn's connected car products include T-Box/OBD (on-board diagnostic system), UBI terminal (insurance paid by vehicle mileage), electronic identification, automotive-grade communication modules, etc.

On June 27, the "5G-led, Smart Travel - 2019 Gosuncn Internet of Vehicles Technology and Application Forum" hosted by Gosuncn will be held in the M46 conference room on the second floor of Hall N4 of the Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC). Together with experts, research institutions and OEM representatives from the Internet of Vehicles industry, the forum will focus on industry-related pain points, decipher the new era of 5G Internet of Vehicles, and lead the way for "smart travel".